In the course “Understanding Russians: Contexts of Intercultural Communications": we will:
1) Build skills in the analysis of the intercultural communication process using Russian-Western communication as an example.
2) Apply the knowledge of interrelations between different contexts of communication (cultural, institutional, professional, social, interpersonal, etc.) to the cultural history and national psychology of Russians.
The purpose of the course is to provide the students with a broad overview of the basic principles governing the past, the present and the future interactions between Russia and the West, with a focus on the culture and national psychology of Russians and Western Europeans.
For example, we will look at the cases when basic cultural values of Russians show up through the linguistic choices shaping language production which is consequently misattributed by Western partners. No matter what the language of intercultural communication is – Russian, or English – the meaning of many linguistic expressions may be reconstructed wrongly by the representatives of another culture.
Some of the basic questions we will tackle are:
• What are the concepts of culture that have the strongest influence on communication?
• What are Russian basic cultural values and how they shape modern Russian consciousness?
• What are the specific communication patterns of modern Russians, including those of public and electronic discourse?
• What is important to know about communication with Russians in organizational contexts?
Importantly, this course is NOT just a list of practical instructions of dos and don’ts of dealing with Russians. The course contains a substantial academic component introducing the key notions and concepts of the Theory of Communication, which will be extensively introduced throughout the first few modules of the course. These theoretical grounds will be further on used as a tool for analyzing the intercultural communications with Russians.
Do you have technical problems? Write to us: coursera@hse.ru

Reviews

TJ

An excellent course! Subject matter was interesting and well-presented!

LR

Jul 06, 2017

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

An important subject presented in a sincere and engaging manner.

From the lesson

Communication in Organizational Contexts

This week of the course is devoted to Russian communication in organizational contexts. Organizations are crucial: they shape culture and are shaped by culture. You will learn how Russian organizational culture developed throughout Russian history and how it influenced the way today's Russians behave in organizational and buziness environment. Our guests Michael Johnston and Ilya Gnoensky will add to the discussion by sharing their impressions on the Russian corporate culture and management styles.

Taught By

Mira Bergelson

Transcript

[SOUND] [MUSIC] Now after we look at this cultural orientation model, orientations and try to discuss how diverse Russia is on this background. Let's go back to organizations, organizational culture and changes in Russian management culture in the new era. And we'll start with the early period of changes, so to say, and look at this color sheet that was what scholars and various researchers tell us about this. And this early period was well represented by the findings of the Harvard Business School where the scholars in the theory of management were looking at the management cultures of, that time, post-Soviet or early Russian managers, former directors, and the Western practices, taking, of course, the Western practices as this the central point the focus from which they were looking at from. Taking this western culture as the center, as something that goes by default. Because, of course, the economy there is developed and here we are starting to just develop this economy. Which probably means, and this is a stereotype, that they were working from of course we need to take all this practices from the well developed economies and take them to the country, to the area, where this economy's only starting to develop. And these guys just need to learn these new ways of doing things. So to do this, we need to see how different they are and where we can help them, how we can fix it. So they counted a lot of differences, differences in decision making style, like 30. Use of hierarchy decision making, use of groups, use of rules in decision making, use of plans, use of direct lateral contacts, meaning communication on the horizontal level within departments, across the departments. Use of lateral, cross-functional teams. They found other differences as well, use of time, the differences in communication style, attitudes to risk and to risk-taking and power, differences in goals and values, as applied in the organizational, or better say, in corporate context. And use of reward and sanctions towards personnel. Quite a few and all of them needed some fixing, which was the goal of many western consultant that came at the time to Russia to perform their functions. And we'll talk about it in a second, but first I would like to introduce some idea of how this Russian cultural management culture looked from the point of view of paper, also early period to 2001 paper in Harvard Business Review by Mikhail Gratchev, which this paper is called Making the Most of Cultural Differences. Because you may look at these two different systems, not as just a system and lack of system, so let's take system here, but as two different systems. And then see the benefits, advantages, of both of them and the drawbacks and what is lacking also in both of them. So now we're looking at the Russian management culture with its features and traits. Because it wasn't the case that it was nonexistent, there was something in this place, it wasn't just [FOREIGN], clear field, where you would need to bring new expertise there was something. And you'd better look at it and see what can be taken, what can be used, applied when you bring in the new expertise, the new technology, the new ways of doing business and so on and so forth. So quoting from this paper, several deeply rooted cultural characteristics of Russian management culture will be willingness to work cooperatively, downplaying of traditional gender roles in the workplace, belief in worker education and training. And that's partly the Soviet heritage that comes from the society where the role of women was really rather high. We didn't need new emancipation of women because this emancipation had taken place in the early 20th century. Willingness to work cooperatively as referring to the Russian collectivist attitudes. Nothing to say about the team members communication. And these features actually can translate into potential benefits for business if you work with them and play with them right. Also Gratchev mentioned that Russian managers tend to be entrepreneurial, cosmopolitan in outlook and comfortable reacting to the rapid changes of an unstable environment. So we see the connection with those orientations that we just discussed. They were flexible, entrepreneurial, also flexible, meaning looking for some risks. And also cosmopolitan in outlook, which means they were actually not looking for specific narrow cultural borders, but they were looking for new expertise and didn't pay attention to where it come from. The fact that Russians tend to be rather entrepreneurial was quite a surprise because there was a common idea at that time, at the beginning, as I said early period, that Russia will never fair in this free market economy. because in the 70 years of the Soviet rule, all entrepreneurial features, all people who had these entrepreneurial skills were executed, were destroyed and that was the real fear. But it turned out that actually not, you know. Happily, there were enough people who wanted to become entrepreneurs and it would have been much better it there were not so many obstacles in their way. Obstacles that were not already created by some cultural traits, but they were part of the modern Russian landscape of the 90's in Northeast. So new management culture that was to be created didn't take, as understood by the Western consultants, actually it didn't take in account these features that were mentioned in the paper by Gratchev. Western consultants were looking at, as I said, a transfer of skills and expertise and in many aspects it was absolutely the correct view except that they really didn't take into account the culture which was there. It's a typical mistake in business, culture does matter. Western consultants targeted at creation new management culture comfortable for western business people. They were bringing new management knowledge and thus influencing the management culture that emerged in Russia. And by doing this, they were trying to influence the restructuring of Russian economy. And as Holden Carr, and Cooper mentioned in their book, by 1998, so like in seven years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, they spent over $2 billion in these projects, which is really terrible is that most of it was spent on western consultants' fees. Over 40% of the assignments actually failed. And what were the problems then? We need to answer this question. Why? Because these people were not meaning to just steal the money or they were not targeting at failures, they wanted their assignments to be successful, but by the assessment of those very same western consultants, 40% of assignments failed. So what were the problems? Actually Holden and Cooper and Carr book tries to answer this question. They look at culture and history of course trying to, and sound facts, to explain why this happened. One aspect of the answers they give in their book, which are interesting for us in this course, is what is related to culture, is the gaps in expectations, expectation gaps, between western consultants and Russian managers. We can see this as a, I don't know, as a table or as a list of what was the western attitude towards Russian managers and what was the Russian attitude towards western consultants. The information that was presented in the book is a result of conducting surveys, having questionnaires answered, and really taking into account the opinion of many type peoples, professionals and specialists in this field from both sides. So western attitude towards Russian managers can be phrase put together as the following. They don't know how to work hard. Well it's 5 PM, the business day's over and they go home, which is probably wrong. As we know now the working culture of Russians in the modern Russian economy is just the opposite. They will probably criticize Dutch people for this. But they do work long hours and somehow it was just the wrong, understanding of what was happening. That was, as I said, we describe the Western attitude as it was reflected in the surveys and questionnaires by these people. Business problems are simple in Russia. Of course such a vast west market you can sell anything. You cannot compare it to the business problems we have in the west. That's how they saw this situation. And change is impossible, Russians are not welcoming change at all, they are afraid of it and it's very hard to introduce anything. Russians got characterized by the fact that they lack experience, they lack know how, they must follow the consultant's advice. Which is worse. They have intuitive approach to many business problems, while in the west decisions will be made on the basis of facts, data, figures and so on and so forth. And Russians have intuitive approach. And also, we cannot give them advice, said the western consultants. We can give an advice, but no decisions. They ask for our advice, but actually they want us to make decisions for them. On the other hand, Russian attitude towards western consultants was also listing certain drawbacks and negative aspects of this corporation. They were saying that the teaching materials that these people brought with them were a misfit, they were not made for Russians, for those people to build with, because they don't know how to teach Russians. And it was related to the fact that the western practices would stress simulation games, role games, the hands on approach. While the Russian system of studying and teaching, Soviet and Russian, was very different. People were used to study in a different ways and also those people who are participating in training seminars and workshops very often were highly positioned managers and they didn't feel it was appropriate because Russia is a hierarchical, high powered distance, culture. So they didn't feel it appropriate to be participating in these games, simulation games, especially if they're partners with their subordinates. So western consultants didn't take this into account and that was criticized by the Russian side. Also the Russians were saying that western consultants, the west, doesn't have appreciation of those changes that did take place. And I told you this is the basic, I would say complaint or probably feeling that Russians have. That the West never paid enough tribute to the immensity of changes. So, western consultants don't see what we already changed. They demand change, change, change, more change. They don't see how much we already done. So, they disappoint the expectations, we were expecting that the western people will come and will see real specialist with serial professionals but, well they disappointed us. So that was the Russian side of the gaps between the western consultants and the emerging class of Russian managers, in the early period of changes in the newest Russian history. [SOUND] [MUSIC]

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